


Life Cycles

by Puffls



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Reincarnation, again. sorta., sorta - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-06
Updated: 2018-02-06
Packaged: 2019-03-14 13:32:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13591089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Puffls/pseuds/Puffls
Summary: Kravitz is left behind once more.Nothing lasts forever, not even death.





	Life Cycles

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [No Soul to Keep](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13566360) by [malevolentmango](https://archiveofourown.org/users/malevolentmango/pseuds/malevolentmango). 



> hey uh, this is a continuation of sorts to Mango's fic. It might make sense if without it, but chances are that it might not. But Mango's a fantastic writer anyways, so you're probably gonna wanna check that out nonetheless aight?  
> if you haven't read mango's fic, all you gotta know is everybody's dead.  
> have fun yall

Time does not stop to accommodate grief.

It does not wait, even as it feels as though the world is crashing down. Life does not stop. The sun keeps shining and the moon keeps rising and the world spins madly on.

You don’t mourn for the dead, Kravitz thinks. You mourn for the living. You grieve for those left behind, not those who live full lives. So maybe it’s foolish that everything still _hurts._

It’s been centuries since Taako joined the rest of his family in the Astral Sea. Centuries since Barry and Lup repaid their debts and retired. Centuries since Bottlenose Cove mourned, since the storm that took Davenport. The Bureau of Benevolence lasted for decades without Lucretia before disbanding. The McDonald family name has long since lost its status of a symbol of prestige, long since buried with the passing of generations upon generations upon generations. Ravens Roost flourishes, the scars left by a mad governor’s final gambit faded and his memory turned into nothing more than a fairytale used to read small children to sleep.

Tales of the Day of Story and Song were written, rewritten, retold and twisted until the truth of the date itself was lost to time in an endless game of telephone among historians. Had his family still been here, they would have laughed at the bastardization of it all, at the exaggerated nonsense that wound its way into the story and grew to be accepted as truth. Their personality stripped away with each retelling, painting the loveable doofuses as stoic heroes when nothing could be farther than the truth, but who could correct them at this point? Others simply denied the day ever happened – and who could blame their disbelief? The story was so farfetched that after so long even Kravitz could hardly believe it happened. And with each retelling it scared him more that eventually he could hardly remember fact from fiction.

He stopped picking up history books after that.

Stopped keeping as close an eye on a society he had no part in.

He lived his life. Accepted his duty. Had the luck to be given a second chance at life after death.

Death has no place lingering in the world of the living. So Kravitz went back to the way things were before: with a hole in his chest and a stiffness in his stride and an indifference to the world around him. He is who he was and always will be

And the world turns on.

 

\---

 

This is what Kravitz knows.

Souls don’t rest at the bottom of the Astral Sea for forever. All living things have an expiration date, and that date extends to their souls as well. It is easy to tell how long a spirit has been adrift in the stillwater sea by how brightly they glow – the older the soul, the dimmer it is. Eventually that light will go out altogether and the soul will vanish. To where, he does not know, as it is not his job to know.

It is not a surprise to watch his family’s souls grow dimmer and dimmer with the passage of time that no longer concerns him. It bothers him nonetheless, watching them slowly fade away. It takes decades. Centuries. But one by one, just as they came, they leave all the same and something in his hollow chest caves in the day he returns and the seven anomalies that meant the world to him were gone.

Kravitz is old.

He wonders if his soul will lose its light one day, too.

 

\---

 

It’s strange to think about, but Kravitz can easily divide his existence into three sections: before Taako, with Taako, and after Taako.

It’s not that his life was any less important or insignificant before the elf came into his life – just, if he hadn’t, it would simply be before death and after death. But the anomalies? The seven birds flew right into his life with Taako at the head and changed it for the better, and then for the worse. No, perhaps not worse. The fact that he played a role in his life in the first place was something Kravitz would never regret, but the absence? The absence of the bird who burrowed deep in his chest and made a nest for the other six?

Everything is just different, now.

It’s the simple things he misses most. It’s waking up to the soft chill on an early autumn morning, his husband in his arms and several winter blankets cocooned around the two of them because Taako grew so cold so quickly after Wonderland. It’s the way the skin of an apple split between his teeth or the first sip of coffee scalded the tip of his tongue because it was always too hot, always. The way soup would fog up the reading glasses Taako swore he didn’t need as he looked over papers for his school and the curses under his breath would cool the broth in his spoon. The way air whistles between the gap in between front teeth when inhaled. The way the body aches with heavy laughter – the lightheadedness and soreness in the ribs and abdominal muscles. The warmth that seeps through contact with a heavy arm around his shoulder, and the sweetness of an answered question as it falls off the tip of his tongue. The soft thwap of perfectly shuffled cards and the proper way to appreciate the wind.

It’s just, he misses them.

Things don’t go back to the way they were before he became _attached._ He finds himself working til he can’t stand the monotony of paperwork anymore, until he’s ready to tear his hair out because of the latest cult _because this has worked in the past, because anyone has ever succeeded in overthrowing the Raven Queen, because of course there’s some new dumbass with a book who thinks he’s hot enough shit to dismantle the balance of life and death,_ until he’s worn himself ragged with chasing liches to the four corners of the earth and needs to stop for his own wellbeing.

He’s grown an appreciation for naps, for example. Dreams are a bittersweet reprieve, a welcome opportunity to take both comfort and fear in past events. A chance to say _hello, I love you, I miss you_ again because he never said it enough and _help me, oh gods, where are you_ in between struggles against an enemy so far gone he’s been turned into a fairy tale for children and _I’m hurt that you left me even though I have no right to be_ all in the same breath. It’s finding closure in a fantasy, because that’s the only place it could exist in the first place.

He wonders if his family would laugh at how he still indulges in the luxuries they reintroduced him to.

Some habits are just hard to shake, he supposes.

 

\---

 

Kravitz throws himself back into his work wholeheartedly once more. Busy hands make a quiet head, as the saying goes.

The paperwork is as bland as it’s always been, but it soaks up the hours that would otherwise be spent alone. It takes longer now that he’s down two pairs of hands, and he’s thankful for how it manages to eat up time. The rhythmic back and forth of his quill is soothing almost, enough variance in the movements and organization that he can’t fully clock out in his head, only lose himself in it. It’s dull. It’s as dull as it’s always been, always will be. But it’s something, and something will be better than nothing when there’s no one to greet him at the end of his day, no one to count down the minutes for.

If Lup were there, she’d joke about him finally hitting employee of the month.

He puts that thought out of mind quickly enough.

 

\---

 

It makes him angry sometimes, that all of this could be forgotten, that their legacies rot to time in the way everything else does.

Because what the hell. What the hell. Their story was a story that all the world heard in the moment it was told, their story marked the day that would have been the end! All the world heard the song of the seven birds who flew tirelessly from a dark storm that consumed everything it touched. All the universe heard so that none would forget.

And yet, all things fade. Eventually everything is forgotten, buried, then rediscovered as an artifact where the meaning is debated on from that point on. Sure, there were many records from many different perspectives of the Day of Story and Song, but could these views be deemed true? Could such a thing even happen? Plane jumping aliens and the sky’s fall – how absurd.

It makes him angry because it’s his burden to bear now, his job to remember where time has forgot.

Kravitz has never been more afraid to forget.

 

\---

 

Cases of family members trying to bring back loved ones who died what they deemed to be before their time leave a bad taste in his mouth. It’s never the right time. There’s never a correct time. It just happens.

Something about being among the living for so long, something about refamiliarizing himself with the thought process of mortal individuals makes him ever so sympathetic to their plights. Not enough to consider it, never enough to consider in the slightest. But just enough to make him ache beneath all the layers of ice.

A mother hunches over the failed abomination of a homunculus; though it doesn’t resemble anything humanoid in the slightest, she is still dead set on “saving” it from him. She doesn’t understand he’s granting her a mercy. They never do.

The elf flattens her ears against her head and lets out a noise akin to a hiss as he approaches, eyes shining bright in the dark and face contorted with fear, desperation, grief, and hatred. She clutches the abomination to her chest harder as he takes a step forward and it takes everything within him to not sigh at the display.

“Look,” Kravitz says, “we both know why I’m here. Let’s not make this any longer than it needs to be.”

She doesn’t give up the homunculus, of course. They never do. It’s not her child – it’s an abomination, not a creature deserving of a mother’s love – yet she clings to that shred of hope and desperation nonetheless. Its head is twice the size of its torso and completely eyeless, limbs sprouting at awkward angles, skin seemingly clinging to bone. The only signal that it lives is the shallow rise and fall of its too-small chest and even calling it that would be a bit of a stretch. It doesn’t matter to her, though; in her eyes, death stole her son and now it is here to steal it from her a second time.

It’s not a long struggle. Cases like these rarely are – just difficult to watch.

“What the hell would you know about loss?” the necromancer eventually screams at him as the conglomeration of bone disintegrates in a haze of necromantic energy. “If you lost your world, wouldn’t you give anything to get it back?”

And while he normally wouldn’t give these questions a second thought, he’s so fucking tired.

“It was his time,” he says. “Move on.”

He isn’t sure if he’s talking about the child or his family.

He tries not to think about it.

 

\---

 

One can only spend so much time napping, so Kravitz takes up wandering again. He continues to be the only constant in this world, observing how it changes around him with the same detached interest that one watches a historical documentary. And it’s fascinating. Empires rise and fall, and society chases its own mistakes the way a restless dog would its own tail. Everything is in a constant state of movement, of improvement, of _change,_ and yet nothing ever really does. It’s less impressive once you start noticing the patterns, he thinks.

One night, he wanders the corner of a trading post turned bustling city block destined to fall into disrepair in a couple of decades, only to bump into a small figure and knock him to the floor. He takes a step back with his eyebrows knit upwards in concern and an apology sits on his lips, only to freeze. Standing right before him is a young boy wearing a too-big pair of coke bottle glasses and clutching the strap of the bookbag slung over his shoulder. The boy recovers quickly, fixing his glasses from where they’ve been knocked off center before hurrying off with a small peep of “many apologies, sir!”

He can only stand there and watch as the child soon disappears into the crowd.

Kravitz never sees him again.

 

\---

 

_"Oh shit!”_

The voice is little more than a surprised hiss accompanied by a muffled thump of something hitting the floor – a book? – as the roar of summoning magic dies down to a gentle thrum in Kravitz’s ears.

His eyes quickly adjust to the dimness of the room – a basement? No, cellar would be the more fitting term. Jars of fruit preserves line the walls on racks accompanied by various herbs hung from hooks to dry. The air reeks of a mixture of garlic and sulfur, and _that’s_ going to take a while to air out. Absolutely disgusting, is what it is. Simply horrid. He stifles a groan and rubs his eyes with the heel of his hand because _of course_ someone attempts a summoning ritual while he’s in the middle of a well-deserved nap, _of course._ Lady Istus must be laughing at her joke: death sleeps for no one.

His ear twitches at the sound of a low whistle, bringing him back to attention. Right.

A tiefling crouches a few feet from where he stands, hands fumbling with an old, weathered tome. A page flutters to the floor as he flips through it and the tiefling can’t help but groan as he snatches it off the ground and places it under the front cover for safekeeping. A few paces behind the tiefling sits a drow woman with a hand that hovers over his arm, eyes darting from Kravitz to the tiefling and back again. Leaning against a wall further back sits another drow – a near mirror image of the first – feigning relaxation, though the narrowing of his eyes gave a clear giveaway of how tense he truly was.

“Shit, I, uh. Didn’t think that’d actually work,” came the nervous laugh of the tiefling, bringing his eyes to him once more, and Kravitz lets out an unamused snort once he sees the tome’s cover – of course Barry wrote it. Of course his works survived this long, and of course it would come to be a pain in his ass. “Can’t say I was expecting to get this far, but, uh…guess we might as well make the most of it?”

The drow closest to him lets out a frustrated noise. “You summoned the grim reaper without a goddamn plan?”

“Didn’t think it’d work!”

_“Who the hell does a summoning ritual without a plan in mind, Daryl?”_

_“Luca, listen - “_

“Hell no, you go through all the effort of not only setting up but carrying out a goddamn summoning ritual without any idea for step two? Koko, tell Daryl he’s a dumbass.”

“Yeah, nah, Lulu’s pretty spot on, no argument there. Darry? You’re a dumbass.”

“Thank you.”

Kravitz had enough of this. He wanted to go back to sleep, not listen to a couple of idiots argue over their own incompetence. Under any other circumstance, he would bury his face in his hands and let out a screech of frustration, but he had an image to uphold – even around these fools. So, he pinches the bridge of his nose and extends his arm to summon his scythe and –

“Listen up, thug, you better keep that fine ass right where it’s at. You, uh, uh, don’t wanna know what’s in store otherwise.”

The drow against the wall (Koda, if he heard correctly?) has his wand pointed at his throat within moments. And normally, he’d scoff at such a threat but there’s something about that lazy grin and focused glare that makes him relax despite himself. The same face in a different situation hovers at the forefront of his mind – though the tables are turned, his movements are the ones slow as can be, magic encasing everything as though he were fighting through molasses – back to a time of pink tourmaline and stolen souls in robot shells, of loveable goofuses and misunderstandings and bounties gone wrong.

He pushes himself off the wall with the same measured indifference, walking ever closer so that the light from the summoning circle illuminates his features better and reflects in those hooded yellow eyes. There’s a gauntness to him, a signal that life hasn’t been particularly kind to him, yet he holds himself with the confidence of someone who believes himself starving for so much more.

“Taako?” The word escapes him before he thinks better of it, hardly any louder than a whisper of disbelief that he knows isn’t quite true. His family has long since all but been forgotten, names nothing more than brief mentions in history books, and only a handful of objects remained to prove that they existed in the first place. No, this isn’t Taako, but he’d recognize it anywhere: his husband’s soul shines bright in the drow all the same.

“I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talkin’ bout, Skeletor.”

Kravitz lets out a soft laugh, the familiarity of the old nickname sweet to his ears and the situation at hand leaving him at a loss for words. Taako is gone. Dead. Had been dead, is currently dead, will continue to be dead. This isn’t the man who stole his heart and left him to grieve ever since. But his soul sits in his chest all the same, the soul he had grown to love and cherish and believed to be lost. It’s not him, not quite. But it isn’t not him. And the recognition of these unfamiliar people with too familiar spirits causes something to stir in his long dead chest nonetheless.

Kravitz stares down the drow, a ghost of a smile dancing along his lips at the memory of the same aloof defiance as the drow stares back. “You aren’t scared of me at all, are you?”

 

Istus smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> finger gun emoji no editing we post like men
> 
> im going thru the fun time of losing a family member myself so this was incredibly cathartic to write. reincarnation is something that I believe strongly in, so being given the opportunity to do something with that was nice. it's comforting to me to think about.
> 
> i just wanna give a shoutout to mango once again because No Soul to Keep was touching in a way i can't put my finger on. Even now, I'm speechless; it's just an incredible fic and an overall experience.  
> also shoutout to the tfw discord in general 'cause y'all're great and i have No Idea what im doing
> 
> my tumblr is whimsicmimic so come yell at me if you wanna


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